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Sunday, 29 April 2018

May Day in a Neoliberal Society

A Forbes article entitled, “On May Day, Communism
Is A Much-Closeted Joke” proclaimed the triumph of neoliberalism and the end
of celebrating workers as follows: “Once its biggest self-celebration, May Day
now signals Mayday for global communism. Just a half century ago, it seemed
irrepressible, now communism is just reprehensible, with the relevance of a
renaissance festival. Ironically, it is the Left who most want to forget...
before the lesson behind communism's demise can be more broadly applied.”https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/04/30/on-may-day-communism-is-a-much-closeted-joke/#5e68b35c5c83

By identifying the workers struggle for social justice with the Soviet
regime, Forbes assumes that the rights of workers have no legitimacy in
the social contract, unless otherwise subsumed by the neoliberal institutional
structure. In a world of poignantly expressed “selfie” narcissistic pathology
as a manifestation of how the hegemonic culture has triumphed over humanity, collectivist
humane values are antithetical to the neoliberal status quo. The dominant
culture indoctrinates the individual toward preoccupation with self and the rejection
of the real community replaced by the virtual one where the self is itself a
commodity and where misanthropic traits are inadvertently cultivated by the
institutional structure that molds identity around material possessions as
conduits to happiness. Despite widespread neglect, abuse and financial
exploitation of the elderly in run-down nursing homes; and despite poorly
educated children are a stark reality, as the rich-poor gap and poverty is
rising amid a growing economy, the dominant culture incessantly conditions the
individual to reject the welfare of humanity, and to focus only on the self and
virtual reality of a "commoditized" world.

How has civilization degenerated to this level, just as its elites proclaim
that everything is done in the name of “progress” for all of humanity? How has
the world come to except systemic exploitation as normal within the context of
a ‘democratic’ society identified with the market economy and with labor as its
enemy? Beyond anti-unionism, a euphemism for pro-corporate-welfare capitalism,
the dominant culture is misanthropic in practice no matter what the varieties
of bourgeois liberals and conservatives proclaim, only to be contradicted by
policies detrimental to working people who are constantly distracted by
everything from nationalism, militarism, religion and all types of identity
pollical issues intended to maintain the existing unjust social order and
misanthropic culture.

Against the background of an open war on labor by capital and the state, a
war that intensified after 1945 – advent of the Cold War - and became more
openly hostile after 1980 – advent of neoliberalism - the significance of May
Day has been diminished to such a degree that even the sixty-six countries
still officially celebrating this day to honor workers, do so superficially,
with vacuous populist rhetoric while public policy points toward a different
direction. Governments pursue anti-labor policies in accordance with
neoliberalism aimed to intensify capital accumulation at any cost to society,
including wars that displace millions of people from their homes, and downward
social mobility with all its consequences from poor health to lack of education
and adequate housing.To buttress
private enterprise, which would otherwise collapse if it were not for government
and its agencies acting as conduits for income transfer from the general
population to the richest segment, the state constantly transfers income from
social programs to corporate welfare, all in the name of economic growth
synonymous with capitalist accumulation.

It is indeed ironic that the US, where May Day has its
origin, government has never celebrated this day, but instead has declared it
‘law and order day’ since Eisenhower. This is indicative of contempt for
workers by a capitalist-controlled state and the resolve to prevent labor from
demanding a voice in public policy as it did in the 19th century
when it confronted a violently hostile employer backed by the state. Today, many
Republican and Democrats openly and unapologetically acknowledge capitalist
monopoly over public policy.Mick
Mulvaney, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, unashamedly
invited 1,300 bank executives to help him convert the agency that he heads into
a pro-banking institution, more so than it is currently, by contributing money
to politicians favoring banking deregulation and curbing consumer protection
safeguards. “We had a hierarchy in my
office in Congress. If you’re a lobbyist
who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us
money, I might talk to you.”

An honest admission of the degree to which neoliberalism has triumphed,
Mulvaney’s speech was indicative of the degree to which capital is now in an
open politically-normalized war against labor and society. This is no different
than it was in the post-Civil War era when the nascent labor movement in
America confronted the combined forces of both employers and the state in the
struggle for living wages, safety, and varieties of employer abuses of workers,
including children and women. An estimated 35,000 workers, mostly Italian and
Irish immigrants, went on strike in Chicago on May 1, 1886 in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre. They
demanded an 8-hour workday, fair wages, work safety, abolition of child labor,
and the end to labor exploitation by management in the workplace. The response
was the police striking workers and government adopting harsh measures against
any worker trying to organize in the aftermath. William J Adelman, founder of
the Illinois Labor History Society and Vice President, correctly stated: "No
single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United
States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began
with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today.
Although the rally is included in American history textbooks, very few present
the event accurately or point out its significance."

As Adelman pointed out, American society is more anti-labor than many other
advanced capitalist countries, though anti-labor policies have spread globally
under neoliberalism since the 1980s. While the police are not out killing
workers as they were in the 19th and early 20th century,
the contemporary neoliberal state has adopted policies intended to crush
organized labor and silence any voice of dissent to the corporate welfare
state.As a market-based institutional
order impacting every aspect of society, including personal identity, neoliberal
corporate welfare has replaced social welfare capitalism. The neoliberal goal
is to turn the clock back to the early stages of capitalist development when
labor had no rights and the state’s role was to act as a conduit for private
capital accumulation. Although society’s institutional evolution does not
permit for a return to 19th century social conditions, the trend is
to erase as many of the vestiges of social welfare as possible in order to
accelerate capital accumulation.

Whether neoliberalism operates under the pluralist model where vestiges of
social welfare and diversity remain as part of the legal structure, or under
the populist authoritarian model intended to erase pluralism and social
welfare, the goal is capital accumulation through massive transfer of income
from labor and the middle class to the richest tiny percentage in the world. Employers
had no difficulty convincing the government to crush the labor movement in
Chicago through violent means in the 1880s or to execute a number of labor
leaders in the aftermath, thus sending a strong message to the world about the
absence of workers’ rights, civil rights, human rights and social justice. The
infamous Chicago Haymarket Massacre left a legacy of the class struggle
with reverberations around the world, exposing the myth of bourgeois democracy
as representative of anyone outside the capitalist class. Anti-union and
anti-labor policies were characteristic of the US government from Haymarket
until the Great Depression when Roosevelt cleverly broadened the labor movement
in order to co-opt if as part of the Democratic party, thus deradicalizing
workers and subordinating the class struggle to capital, in return for a social
welfare state.

Post-Vietnam War progressive opposition to the misanthropic neoliberal culture
in most countries has been co-opted by pluralist neoliberal political parties
claiming to represent all classes within the context of the existing social
order. Every identity group, from minorities, women, elderly, alternative
lifestyle, environmental groups, etc. is represented under the larger umbrella
of a pluralist political party. Similarly, the conservative to rightwing
identity groups, religious, nationalist, militarist, xenophobic, racist,
misogynist, etc. are under the umbrella of the populist/authoritarian
neoliberal political camp as in Trump’s Republican Party. The left representing
the working class – lower middle class included – has a very weak voice so
marginalized a much in the historically anti-left America as in most of the
Western World. Instead of joining the progressive leftist camp, the labor
movement is itself co-opted by the neoliberal political parties of the
pluralist or populist variety, thus society operates under a totalitarian
canopy within which the choices are between the neoliberal pluralist or the
populist pluralist parties, with variations in modalities, considering inherent
conflicts among the political and financial elites choosing different camps.

President Macron representing the pluralist neoliberal camp in France is just
as militaristic and anti-labor as Trump representing the populist neoliberal
camp in the US. Labor’s representation in these governments is non-existent.
Operating within the parliamentary system, France has an anti-capitalist
non-revolutionary party, though it has not been put to the test and it has a
very long way to go before it takes power. The myth about social welfare costs is easily disputed when considering that the US spends twice as much for corporate welfare. "The final totals are $59 billion, 3 percent of the total
federal budget, for regular welfare and $92 billion, 5 percent of the total
federal budget, for corporations. So, the government spends roughly 50% more on
corporate welfare than it does on these particular public assistance programs."https://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/corporate-welfare/corporate-vs-social-welfare/

In the neoliberal age that dominates life in all its aspects, the
development of genuine socialism seems unattainable and people become
fatalistic or apathetic. However, the contradictions of the neoliberal
establishment, the countless of contradictions in the social order will produce
the foundations of a new social order built on the ashes of the one decaying. The
declarations of the Asia-Europe People’s Forum in the last two decades point
out some of the structural problems of the neoliberal status quo, as
articulated by heads of state. However, these declarations remain mere
rhetoric, as the 11th Asia-Europe Meeting Summit of July 2016 illustrates.

Working for Inclusive, Just, and
Equal Alternatives in Asia and Europe. AEPF11 tackled strategies on major
themes or People’s Visions, representing the hopes of citizens of the two
regions. These are:

ASEM11 touches on some of the problems
without analyzing their root causes, namely, globalist neoliberal policies that
the same heads of state as signatories are pursuing.While agreeing on the interlocking nature of
the crises of capitalism, and acknowledging such crises are the cause of
greater social polarization - poverty, inequality, joblessness, and insecurity –
they are not willing to abandon the very system that gives rise to the crises. While
they readily admit that “We are
increasingly experiencing corporate capture”, whereby multinational and
national corporations structure and determine our lives and livelihoods,”
they are unwilling to do anything about it. No government is doing anything to
encourage genuine grassroots progressive movements, labor and social movements
that would become the foundation for a new social order rooted in social
justice. On the contrary, the goal is to prevent labor mobilization,
progressive social organizations, unless of course they are co-opted and
subordinate to the goals of neoliberalism. That the US does not celebrate May Day to honor workers is a reflection of the dominant culture's contempt for labor. For those countries that officially celebrate May Day while pursuing neoliberal anti-labor policies, the holiday has
been reduced to about the same level of hypocrisy as any national Independence
Day – oppression remains a reality for workers, while equality and social justice are a distant
dream.

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deity of sleep and dreams, the book reveals the soul of a people trying
to ascertain and assert their identity while rebuilding their lives and
recapturing the glory of a lost civilization.

Seeking liberation from restraints of time, social conventions, and
binding traditions, the deity of dreams provides the conformist and the
free-spirited characters in the novel with venues for redemption that
are mere paths toward illusions. Exploring the complexities of human
relationships shaped by priest and politician alike, the novel rests on
the central theme that life is invariably a series of illusions, some
of which are euphoric, most horrifying, all an integral part of daily
existence.

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western civilization in two global wars, the characters in Slaves to
Gods and Demons struggle between holding on to the glory and grandeur of
a pagan legacy and the Christian present shaped by contemporary
secular events in Western Civilization."